Spring Preview 2011

The Oscar
season is nearly behind us, which means the showboating might have stopped but
the quality remains as strong as always. Check out our guide to the top
films this spring before summer’s mayhem arrives.

LAUGHS

Hoorah! The
Farrelly brothers return, this spring, with their take on extra-marital
affairs. Hall Pass arrives
11 March and stars Owen Wilson and Christina Applegate in what
hopefully will be more Dumb and Dumber and less Shallow Hall. Meanwhile,
The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade brings us Submarine a week later
which will no doubt make youngster Craig Roberts a true star
and give Arctic Monkey’s fans a treat; Alex Turner’s done the soundtrack.

Also worth a
mention comes Pete Postlethwaite’s last film, Killing Bono on April
Fool’s Day. The tale of two brothers’ trials in starting out musically as they
become eclipsed by fellow schoolmates U2 should be a load of fun. However if
it’s goofing around and slapstick that tickles you then make a date
on 15 April for Your Highness, a twisted
version of Princess Bride with Portman and Franco trying on something a
little less serious for size.

Equally
worth a look comes Take Me
Home Tonight mid May. A sort of Zach Braff-inspired comedy-drama, this should
put Topher Grace back in everyone’s hearts after the lacklustre Predators.

FAFFS

Drama fans
will have a mixed time after the awards season’s theatrical tugs. However Woody
Allens’ You Will Meet A
Tall Dark Stranger out on 18 March promises laughs and drama,
all at the expense of Hopkins, Brolin and Banderas. Should be good. After Moon’s terrific
recepetion, Duncan Jones returns with Source Code early April.
A cross between Quantum Leap’s time-travelling escapades and Donnie Darko’s cryptic
content it promises plenty of questions for each puzzling answer. Just as well
it stars the latter’s Jake Gyllenhaal then.

The same
week sees what promises to be this season’s dramatic dark horse. Oranges and Sunshine stars
Hugo Weaving and the brilliant Emily Watson in a disturbing tale of child abuse
here and down under. It might look like an Oscar reject, but it promises to be
as redeeming as it its content is revolting.

THRILLS

In what
promises to be a great few months for thrill seekers, Adjustment Bureau arrives
March 4^th starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. Another Philip K.
Dick adaptation, this time our hero Damon is on the run from some
sinister forces that control our present and future. Think Minority Report
meets The Matrix and you have some idea where this is going.

Kick-Ass
fans get their own fix before next year’s sequel with Zack Snyder’s take
on rebellious young ladies in Sucker Punch (photo below). Good,
clean, legal fun; plus plenty of guns. Elsewhere, late April sees the arrival
of Kenneth Branagh’s Thor
starring Chris Hemsworth with added Anthony Hopkins gravitas in what
promises to be the best fantasy/sci-fi/medieval crossover
film of the month.

CHILLS

Finally,
horror fans will have something genuinely terrifying to banish
those winter blues as Guillermo Del Toro returns with his
penned Don’t Be Afraid of
the Dark at the start of March. Similar perhaps top his breakthrough Pan’s
Labyrinth, this looks just as creepy, inventive and unsettling.

American
Horror returns from the found-footage and hand-held camera dramas of recent
years with the more traditional psycho take rarely seen since
Single White Female with mid-April’s The Roomate. Already
popular in the States with a cast of relative unknowns, this should add a
different side of campus life to the one Social Network made so cool.

However
that’s likely to be eclipsed by horror maestro Wes Craven and the
return of the Scream franchise the same date. Expect Scream 4 to be the usual
mix of scares, chills and giggles the genre has been missing for well
over ten years. Welcome back Wes.